Players Not Concerned

Sure, there was a sense of disappointment in USC’s locker room after the Trojans’ lackluster showing in an 83-64 loss Saturday at California.

But there was no sense of impending doom. Rather, there was optimism among the 20th-ranked Trojans, who had dropped out of a first-place tie in the Pacific 10 Conference and into a three-way tie for second.

“We’ve lost before and bounced back with a win,” senior power forward Sam Clancy said. “And that’s what I expect against Oregon this week.”

Win their final two regular-season games this week at home--against the first-place Ducks and eighth-place Oregon State--and the Trojans win at least a share of the Pac-10 title for the first time since 1985. USC is 10-1 at home this season.

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USC Coach Henry Bibby surprised many on the Bay Area trip when he started seldom-used Gregg Guenther at center against Stanford and California. With starting center Kostas Charissis out at least three more weeks with a broken bone in his left ankle, Bibby leaned on the 6-foot-8, 250-pound Guenther, an oft-injured tight end on the USC football team, for quality minutes.

“He gave us what we needed,” Bibby said of Guenther’s 17 minutes of play, in which he had three rebounds and an assist but missed both of his shots. “He’s a nice big body that we can put in there.”

Guenther said that playing football in front of 70,000-plus crowds prepared him for the raucous atmospheres of Maples and Haas pavilions.

“Plus, I’ve been playing [basketball] in summer leagues against pros so I wasn’t really nervous,” he said.